Our [Chartist] meetings were well attended, the number of our members increased greatly, and all went well until January, 1842, when the great hosiery houses announced that orders had ceased, and the greater number of the stocking and glove frames must stand still.  […]  Some of the working men began to ask me to let them have bread on credit; and I ventured to do it, trusting that all would be better in time.  Our coffee-room was still filled, but not half the coffee was sold.

 One afternoon, without counselling me, some five hundred of the men who were out of work formed a procession and marched through the town at a slow step, singing, and begging all the way they went.  It wrung my heart to see a sight like that in England.  They got but little, and I advised them never to repeat it.